


Afterimages of a Life Never Lived

by yeehaw7



Series: unsent letters [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: M/M, Post-Avengers (2012), Pre-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-01
Updated: 2020-02-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:26:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22501699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yeehaw7/pseuds/yeehaw7
Summary: A letter from Steve Rogers to one (presumed) dead Bucky Barnes
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Series: unsent letters [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1618927
Comments: 13
Kudos: 27





	Afterimages of a Life Never Lived

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Zoe for accompanying me in spirit while I edited and also for helping me with this title! ❤
> 
> I haven't been uploading recently due to my lack of a laptop so this feels like a real achievement lmao. There is a sequel in the works but I'm unsure how far away it is due to aforementioned lack of laptop. Hopefully I'll be getting a new one in the next month or so tho!
> 
> It's entirely unintentional that the final word count is 1945, but I feel like it's sort of fitting, don't you?

We're famous, James Barnes, you know that? I don't mean propaganda-like film reels or wartime comics. I'm talking real, tangible fame, I'm talking household name fame, history textbook fame. 

It doesn't suit us.

I say that because it's a shame, it really is, that history censors and smudges and blurs everything so ordinarily beautiful, leaving only the extraordinarily fascinating, the too-good-to-be-true's and the too-horrible-to-have-really-happened's. I wouldn't mind it so much if it were just me, but you don't deserve that. After you gave the world your everything, your life included, they at least owe you the dignity of your truth.

If only they would let me rewrite it! I could tell them all about you, Buck, I could tell them how you seemed to hold all the world behind your eyes and how when the sun rose in the mornings after Azzano, I could see the sun rise in them too, see your own emotion of the night replaced with that of the world's daylight because you were determined to show that those Hydra bastards couldn't hurt you. I could talk about how you always made sure I went up stairs first, because that way you could support me if I had an asthma attack, or if my heart skipped a beat, and how you always carried a pencil in your right pocket where I could easily reach it. I could talk about how you had guts of fire and lungs of ice, how you could command any soldier's respect in an instant, regardless of rank, and how everyone who met you either loved you or begrudgingly liked you, because you were too good to hate. I won't, because you would've been able to word it so much better, and nobody will read it besides. It doesn't sound real enough for them, nowhere near the gritty World War 2 stories they romanticize or Captain America tales they idolize.

I might not be a poet like you, but still I can talk to you, here, right? About things like how you were an artist, but not an artist in the sense that I was an artist - you drew in vague shapes and lines that captured emotions and colours and sensations - I say I _was_ an artist, because I don't draw anymore, Buck. There's nothing to draw when your whole world has fallen off a train somewhere off the side of a mountain, when his body is probably buried too deep under the snow and ice for retrieval, although, that's what they thought of mine, wasn't it? Y'know, if I valued my sanity a little less, sometimes I might let my mind kid me a little and convince me that you're still out there. I would know, if you were really gone, wouldn't I? It seems inconceivable that I wouldn't. People notice when their soul leaves their body, right? Or maybe they don't, like Schmidt. Maybe those types of people never have souls to begin with. I don't know, Buck, I don't know what to think of this world without you in it.

I know that this sounds like the rambling of a grieving man, and a man who's grieving too late. I guess I never really had a chance to, back then. When I woke up, I was more focused on getting used to the present than processing the past. I was in the ice for nearly seventy years - that's twice as old as my ma was when she died, can you believe it? I don't think I'll ever catch up on all I've missed. Speaking of, you'd love the internet, Buck. Remember how you loved hearing about Stark's latest shenanigans? How you would soak up any and all knowledge because you had a thirst unlike any other and by God, you were never going to be satisfied? You don't have to hunt down apprenticeships or own a million books for access to that kinda knowledge anymore. I think that if you were here, with your stolen notebooks and eager mind and pencil that you sharpened with your penknife, the world would be a better place, but I guess that's a given, isn't it? It wouldn't matter what you did while you were here, because you'd be here and the world would be complete again. Or maybe just my world. I've never been crystal clear on the differences, that's what you were here for. To point them out to me. To know me as well as I knew you. As I know you. 

God, there I go again. 

I'm beginning to wonder what exactly 'to the end of the line' means. Does it mean until death, in which case, my death or yours, or both? Is it fair to assume you're dead when we don't have a body to prove it? Is it fair to assume I'm alive when I was dead for so long? How can it be to the end of the line when I can't live without you, I'm nothing without you but a false image of ruler-straight morals and sickly-sweet bravery created by men whose only concern was winning the war and that somehow, I fit into that plan. You're the only one who followed the little guy from Brooklyn - everybody else seems to see the stars and stripes and not the man wearing them. I don't think I've been Steve Rogers, not truly, since I stepped out of Stark's machine with the serum flowing through my veins, and even less after 1945. You would know that, if you were here. You'd pick it out in a nanosecond.

The history books censored me too, you know. It's all facts and no emotion. What do facts and dates tell you of the times where ma was so convinced I was going to die that she'd already called the priest and he was on his way over, and she'd called you too, except you were faster than the priest because you ran the way over on fear-spurred legs where he caught a cab because for him it was just another night with another kid dying too young? But for you, it was the end of your world, or the world, I know it was, because you knelt by my bed and you _prayed_ , Buck, I heard you. I have never heard you utter a single word of a prayer apart from those nights where you and ma and everyone else who ever knew me thought that tonight would come the final breath of Steven Grant Rogers, and I was convinced too, until I wasn't and I woke up and found I wasn't coughing as half as bad as before and you'd smile at me through your tears and it was the most glorious thing I'd ever seen. I've seen some pretty good paintings, famous ones too, but none of them come close to you.

But I guess that's just payback, isn't it? Good things never last. There was no denying that you were good. Everybody you ever met knew it. Hell, even Colonel Phillips liked you, which is a miracle in itself, because I didn't know he was even capable of positive emotions, but he and everyone else were moths to your flame, Buck. Dark to make your light seem brighter. The stars to your moon. I think there's something to admit there, but first I'd have to admit it to myself and I don't think I'm ready for that, not when you're not here. It's doesn't feel right to think about something like that, sort of how I'd imagine peering into a dame's bedroom window while she's getting dressed would feel. So I won't. I'll scribble down some more cheesy phrases and try my best to put down you, in all your truth, in words, on paper. It's something I could do all day.

But I guess I can't, because I've got to get up and keep going and continue pretending to be a functioning adult who isn't a man out of time. I don't think I'll ever get used to it, which somehow people expect me to be okay with. I've had at least four people tell me to move on just in the last week. I wish it were that easy, to make a decision to live in the now and stick with it, but I can't, not when I see the Commandos in every bar that I pass. Not when I live in a tower built by fucking Tony Stark with people with similar ideals as me, who I wouldn't give up for the world but if I could go back I know I couldn't bring with me. In the first month I was back, Buck, it felt like they'd taken my head and shoved it onto somebody else's body, and you'd think that would be a feeling I'd be familiar with, but even after the serum I still knew that the body I was in was mine. I still knew where I fit. I didn't have a place in the present, and now that I do, or at least, Captain America does, as an Avenger, I feel stuck. One foot planted in the past and another in the future. How do you overcome that? 

It's one thing to see your best friend die and live two weeks mourning him with everyone else who knew him, it's another to wake up after what feels like mere moments and find he's been dead for seventy years and not a single other person is still mourning him, let alone remembers him. It's one thing to feel as if you're on the tail end of the war, it's another to wake up and find the war is seventy years done, that it's all wrapped up and the only things remaining to show it ever happened are the memories passed down the generations and the scars on the surface of the earth.

I don't know why I complain. It could be worse. I could be dead. I could still be at the bottom of the ocean. Although, that doesn't sound like such an awful place to be right about now.

I don't know why I bother to say that. Nobody will ever read this besides me, and even if there was somebody, it would be you and you never will, so what's the point?

God, it still hurts, Bucky.

I should go. Natasha suggested we go down to your grave this afternoon, but it doesn't feel the same, knowing you're not in it. I figured that maybe getting a hold of your file might help, but when I did, I found it still said MIA, rather than KIA and that was enough to suggest that probably nobody had cared enough to keep it updated past what was necessary. It's on my bedside table. It helps me remember that you were real and not some weird dream, in a way. 

I said that I should go so I wouldn't end up in this spiral, damn it.

I think that this helped, a little. Maybe wherever you are you're able to look over my shoulder and read as I write. In any case, I really should go before I work myself up too much. I'll find Nat and we'll go on a walk or something. God knows she never lets herself any time to do anything that isn't productive. You'd like her, actually. Sam too. If there's a heaven, I'll tell them to introduce themselves to you when they go, because we all know that wherever I end up, it won't be there.  
I'll talk to you later, jerk.

(This is where you call me 'punk'.)


End file.
